Iranian reformists repeated their appeal for calm as university students prepare for the new academic year Monday after deadly unrest marred a meeting of pro-reform students last month.
The Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIFP), headed by President Mohammed Khatami's brother Mohammad-Reza, urged students to continue their policy of "active calm" in a statement carried by state news agency IRNA late Saturday.
But the IIPF also blasted the "new strategy adopted by the monopoly camp," referring to conservative opponents whom it accused of trying to "erase certain realities" of reform in Iran since Khatami's 1997 election.
After police attacked a student demonstration over the court-ordered closure of a pro-Khatami newspaper last year, setting of the worst unrest in 20 years, reformists have regularly appealed for calm.
But a conference organized last month by the Office to Consolidate Unity (OCU), the largest pro-reform student group, was marred by violence when a mob blocked leading critics of the clerical regime from addressing the group.
One policeman was killed and dozens of people, both students and police, were wounded in the violence which rocked the western city of Khoramabad for several days.
The OCU, which claimed students were savagely beaten by police and militia after the unrest erupted, last week pledged to stick to its "active calm" policy in the new school year.
"Active calm is not a strategy of silence," spokesman Mohammed Tabataie said, adding that students had to avoid "falling into the trap of physical confrontation" which could further hurt the reform movement.
Reformists have repeatedly charged that conservatives are orchestrating such unrest through the use of "plain-clothes" provocateurs in a bid to undermine Khatami's re-election hopes in 2001.
"With the upcoming presidential elections, anti-reformists are making every effort to disrupt calm ... and push the society into growing worry and unrest," MP Abdolrahmin Tajedin said last week.
The president is scheduled to deliver an address Monday at Tehran university, where last year's riots first erupted, but the issue of press freedom is hotter than ever, and he approaches next spring's elections deprived of one of his most effective political tools.
The conservative courts closed down more than 20 mostly pro-reform newspapers and journals earlier this year after the IIPF led reformists to a sweeping victory in February's parliamentary elections.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei then later issued a rare personal decree barring the new reform parliament from debating a measure to roll back curbs on the press.
Khatami last week made a tour through the provinces in which he vigorously defended his reform program, calling for greater political freedom and saying that the right of people to control their own destiny was “the foundation of democracy.” - TEHRAN (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
